Challenging current attitudes to governance and regulation in business, this timely book ascertains how regulatory approaches can innovate to ensure sustainable business that contributes to social justice for current and future generations within ecological limits. The volume will prove an invaluable resource for students and scholars of sustainability science, business and management, and law and regulation.
Critical acclaim for the volume
‘Existing corporate sustainability practices and regulatory approaches may no longer be fit for purpose for our COVID-19 world and beyond. Innovating Business for Sustainability not only captures the zeitgeist, its contributors do so in a reflective work of real scholarship which conveys the urgency of the challenge, bringing to bear thought-provoking fresh angles that frame and advance the field against the backdrop of a global pandemic.’
– Deirdre Ahern, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
‘There is growing recognition that the interconnected global crises we face require urgent reforms to the conduct of business, yet the nature and extent of such reforms remain hotly debated. This essential volume compellingly argues that we must embed the concept of sustainability at the very heart of corporate law, and the authors’ expert analyses challenge us to rethink prevailing regulatory approaches in light of the gendered nature of existing structures and the complexity of social-ecological systems.’
– Christopher M. Bruner, University of Georgia, School of Law, USA
‘The circular economy, corporate social responsibility, green finance, and other proliferating concepts in the corporate landscape speak to the importance of embedding greater environmental sensitivity in business practice. This timely, cosmopolitan volume provides, through the voices of female scholars, valuable insights into adapting business governance to the upheavals of the Anthropocene. Professors Sjåfjell, Liao and Argyrou offer a superb, landmark contribution to theoretical and empirical knowledge in this field.’
– Benjamin J. Richardson, University of Tasmania, Australia
The second Daughters of Themis volume
The volume springs out of one of the several collaborative projects of Daughters of Themis: International Network of Female Business Scholars. It is, as the second Daughters of Themis volume, inspired by and builds on the first one: Creating Corporate Sustainability: Gender as an Agent for Change (Cambridge University Press, 2018). It has been completed under conditions made more difficult than usual by the unprecedented global COVID-19 pandemic, and yet the surrounding implications from the pandemic have stimulated even deeper reflection on the state this world is in and what we can do to contribute to change.
The volume’s analytical approach draws on two elements that have not been sufficiently discussed in existing literature on regulatory approaches for sustainable business: a sustainability-research informed understanding of the global goals that diverse regulatory approaches are or should be attempting to achieve, and a gendered perspective of how these goals are shaped and how business should engage with these issues.
Contents of the volume
The book is available in print and online through selected university libraries. The introductory chapter as well as abstracts of all chapters are freely available on SSRN.
Chapter 1: Innovating Business for a Sustainable Post-Pandemic Future
By Carol Liao, Beate Sjåfjell, Aikaterini Argyrou
Chapter 2: We Need to Talk About Gender in the ‘Safe Operating Space for Humanity’
By Sarah E. Cornell
Chapter 3: Systems Thinking and the Law in the Age of the Anthropocene
By Hanna Ahlström
Chapter 4: The Problem with Selling Gender Equality as Business Innovation
By Roseanne Russell
Chapter 5: Superannuation Funds and Corporate Sustainability in Australia: The Power of an Emerging Actor in Polycentric Governance
By Vijaya Nagarajan and Ann Wardrop
Chapter 6: Sustainability and Implementation of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive in the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain – End of the Beginning?
By Isabel Άlvarez Vega and Charlotte Villiers
Chapter 7: The Shortcomings of Regulating Transparency for Sustainable Development in African Mining
By Sara Ghebremusse
Chapter 8: How Legal and Tax Support Can Reinforce the Innovative and Inclusive Power of Social Enterprises
By Pjotr Anthoni, Aikaterini Argyrou and Tineke Lambooy
Chapter 9: Can the Modern Corporation Operate Sustainably?
By Susan Watson
Chapter 10: Resilient Corporate Agents: The Workers’ Role in Sustainability
By Yue S. Ang
Chapter 11: Regulation by Litigation on the Path to Sustainable Corporations
By Carol Liao
Chapter 12: Re-embedding the Corporation in Society and on Our Planet: Company Law as a Vehicle for Change
By Beate Sjåfjell
Chapter 13: Corporate Law and Sustainability in a Reimagined Post-Pandemic World
By Carol Liao, Beate Sjåfjell and Aikaterini Argyrou
More information about the volume is available on the website of Edward Elgar Publishing. The royalties from sales of Innovating Business for Sustainability go to the network Daughters of Themis, to contribute to funding its activities.